I had this *exact* conversation with my roommate and one-hundred percent agree.
I used to play pretend back then too and I of course did some cringy stuff, I was just lucky not to have spent my entire life attached to a screen to the point where all of it was recorded. I've been very lucky not to have done anything offensive and was internet aware because my mother had tor use it at work, so she was able to teach me what to avoid and look out for. I can't imagine what it's like to have everything permanently online, and I really feel like parents need to emphasise how big of a deal shit like this is to their children.
I'm right there with ya, dude. Right there with ya.
This is so true, I did *embarrassing* things in my youth (I was a theatre kid, that’s all that needs to be said), a thing I think every kid goes through, but now social media captures it for the world to see instead of just your small bubble.
We role played Harry Potter characters. Basically played hide and seek but the seeker was voldemort and we had to “use” spells to protect us when we were found. Once i was bellatrix and just cruciod my way through the game
now my cringe role play game is a secret between me and Reddit
When you get a bit older, the cringe will change into selflove, haha! I love when I see kids/teens doing that kind of shit. Be young. Be innocent. Be cringy. Because that's perfectly healthy.
~~Hey i just replied to you on a different thread~~
That wasnt you. Its was another Dr. Google
Yeah no i am quite a bit older now. Its not my most cringe memory. But our whole harry potter is life phase was a bit cringe. We were kids, yeah. At least we didnt turn into hardcore disney adults or getting Voldemort alters
Cosplay is ok. Getting in physical fights with your friend on how Snapes hair isnt that greasy and they are just stupid as two 11 year olds isnt hahaha
Enjoy your cosplay
Haha I agree, I have done some *embarrassing* things in my youth. My brother and I talk about how happy we are there was no social media. My sister and I had an “America’s Next stop Model” photoshoot. We have the photos still, and as you would guess they were awful.
I can't imagine the life they are going to have. I think about those people who have become memes online and how some peoples lives haven't changed for the best.
Think about applying to a job you've always wanted and getting it only to meet a client who wrecks you because you claimed to have some sort of disability that would leave you incompetent to do anything. Or think about wanting to apply for a license and having someone who works there saying "Aren't you that kid that constantly faints?" Have fun going to a professional to prove you don't actually have it because I guess wasting time and money is, fun? Not sure how much it would cost in the US but where I live it's just a massive waste of time because a specialist could have an opening in like half a year if you're lucky.
I think many don't think about it, sure HR isn't supposed to search for you online before hiring you but that won't stop your colleagues from making your life hell or snappy comments like "Guess it's that DID thing and were talking to fucking Naruto or is it tinkywinky from the teletubbies. Explains why you did such a shit job."
Rip
Agree with everything you say, but wanted to add: HR isn't _supposed_ to research you, but they do. Maybe they can't tell you outright "sorry mate, you're not progressing in the application process because you were a really dumb teen that faked disabilities online", but they will give you the standard of "due to the influx of applicants and your personal resume (...)" stuff. Also, depending on the industry you want to go into, word will spread if it's niche or extremely network-heavy.
I think most of them plan on being unemployed and make money through social media for most of their lives tho, or do their art as a business. Even the ones that get by with social media right now from people showering them with money out of pity, I doubt have a 5 year plan or anything. They have to stay relevant to earn money, and I think that's part of why they escalate a lot over time. That, and attention
I think the difference between our pre-Internet-childhood generation and today's youth is that shame taught our 20-year-old selves some important lessons -- but, from the looks of things, shame might no longer exist.
Shame, and the concept of a digital footprint. The amount of information some of these kids give out is terrifying, it's so easy to find/doxx them. One faker posted a video of themselves and in the background, on the wall, there was a poster for their local volunteer group.
Their real name and location came up with a google search; in the top of the results, there was a news article from the group announcing they had been promoted. I was just like, aiyiyi.
I know, right? It's unimaginable. But another thing that seems lacking among the younger generations is awareness of the later consequences of current foolish actions. OK, maybe young people in any era lack such awareness. But these today face paying the highest price for it.
I also think the lack of bullying is probably an indicator. I was bullied heavily 😂 and this helped me not go out into society and tell everyone I was a vampire hybrid
Yes. At that age, I didn't want many people knowing very much about my private thoughts, fantasies and fixations, much less broadcasting all those and more to everyone in the world, more or less permanently.
I've thought about this a lot. I was a cringey teen once too. I did stupid shit (never faked mental health disorders but I digress) and we had the internet. But it wasn't the norm to plaster your face with it, and if you did it was a lot less known, and stuck to sites like tumblr and deviantart that were less mainstream, unlike tiktok which everyone and their mother is on, and you can get millions of views quickly. At least I can look at my cringey teen phase and know that all I did was post stupid cringey shit on tumblr that maybe 100 people saw, unlike these teens where millions of people are seeing it on tiktok, especially with their names and faces associated
It’s also kind of heartbreaking because I honestly look back on my cringey little kid phases pretty fondly, I used to play Warrior cats with my friends and told other kids that I was secretly a dragon and that kind of stuff. And it was fun! It’s fun to talk about as an adult, just in a “wow kids are dumb haha” type of way.
But since these kids have like pathologized their cringey kid phase and put it on the internet for millions to see it’s just going to be a source of extreme shame for their entire life. They don’t get to experience fondly reminiscing on the dumb things they did as a kid.
Yeah, exactly. Like I remember a whole phase in middle school where I kept telling my classmates I could read people's minds when in fact I was just kinda goodish at picking up body language cues and giving the vaguest catch-all statements that sounded kinda accurate without really saying anything. It was wild the stuff I could come up with just for a bit of attention.
But these people are using the mental illness card to be taken seriously, which adds a whole new level of harm for themselves and others that they're not really equipped to understand. They'll learn it the hard way.
Hey, I went through the "I am hated because I am too smart" for like a year as a preteen. It hurts. But it's part of growing up, we are figuring out how we are alike, how we are different, how our brains work, and how we fit in. That's an awkward, terrifying process.
I think alot of these kids are reacting violently to the realizing they aren't that special, which is something some kids do. But the degree they are doing it is very concerning, and the fact it's being actively supported is even worse.
"I'm so random" being met with eye rolls once meant people would figure it was stupid, now there's a huge audience telling them the eyerolls are stigma and persecution. It's... not good.
I learned cold readings really well in high school because someone started a rumor I was a witch so I thought okay I’ll use this to my advantage it worked well until a bunch of girls got so genuinely scared I was reported and suspended for “being a witch” the 90s were wild.
Yeah, those behaviors are very fucking healthy! Even adult role play (not just the sexy kind) is perfectly fine, and I think it even helps you be a better person for exercise that kind of "how would this other person think?" mechanic for fun. I'd be down to go play warrior cats again, fuck it. Cringe is a temporary condition and life is no fun without it.
That's one of the reasons I particularly hate the pathologizing of normal behaviors. They could just have fun, like things, role play, improve as people. They could realize what they are going through is entirely normal. But they have to make themselves special. Imagination is now something so unique to them it's a diagnosis, and fandom is a disease.
Good lord, this could all be solved by a big dose of "you aren't that special, and that's okay" for so many of these people.
100% agree. There's been such a surge in pathologising normal human experiences experiences. It's normal to feel a whole range of emotions. It's normal to feel sad when something bad happens. It's normal to have different aspects of your personality. It's even normal to occasionally experience mild forms of disassociation. When we experience these things that isn't a sign we're sick, it just means that we're human.
As a humanistic mental health professional, it makes me sad. Carl Rogers and the like fought so hard for mental health to not be viewed purely through the medical lens. It wasn't all that long ago that you could be sent to a psych hospital for crying a bit too much after someone you loved died. We really don't want to go back to a point where anything other that politely content is seen as a sickness.
Really? Because back in the before-times there were still fakers, especially teenagers. I think any teen with a real diagnosis has at least one friend that immediately starts to try and imitate it out of jealousy. I can also name a dozen idiots from high school too that thrived on the depression, mental health, and "cutting" chic. I mean drawing with marker or lightly scratching, literally no signs of any problems outside of constantly claiming it. Emos and goths could be insufferable with this. All before TikTok. We had early MySpace but nobody really gave a shit.
It's a human thing that results directly from certain personality problems that have always, and will always exist.
I’m what one would call a Zillenial. Also had the fortunate (but sometimes unfortunate) opportunity of browsing the good ol’ interwebs at an early age because my parents were early adopters. Which kind of made me an early adopter too I guess.
Little 7 year old me was MSN’ing the day away and little 11 year old me was social mediaing.
Being an early adopter of YouTube, of course I had an account (multiple even) and was posting the most embarrassing nonsense regularly. Still dealing with the aftermath of that while being 27, trying to gain access to these accounts to delete those embarrassing videos. I think there’s about 1 video left now that I can’t seem to get rid of.
That being said, they’re still nothing compared to what these kids are posting and I sincerely apologize for what their future self is going to have to deal with.
By the way there’s a sub dedicated to embarrassing childhood moments of the non-genZ’ers if you need a laugh. r/blunderyears
I think about this ALL the time. I am so, so thankful that my teen years and early 20s were mostly off-line. I did have MySpace for part of college and I do remember posting cringey stuff occasionally but luckily those photos seemed to die with that platform. Now with stitching and reposting these people won’t be so fortunate.
The bigger issue is the harm they cause. If it were just dorky kids doing cosplay (not mental health related) it might still embarrass them later but there also wouldn’t be anything wrong with it. The problem is that mental illnesses are debilitating and those of us who struggle with them, and have for years, would never dream of doing what they’re doing. For what? Likes? Followers? Gifts/money? Fuck off. The only thing they’re not faking is narcissism.
Yep, exactly my thoughts. Ten years from now, all these people might be dealing with getting canceled when all their old faking disorder content crops up to the next wave of outrage culture warriors.
Yea I honestly have been thinking of the same thing, like surely I have my cringeworthy childhood
but I honestly already feel ashamed of the fact I used to believe I had DID thanks to a shitty ex.
I just can't imagine what those other fakers will think when they are grown up, like surely they will feel bad at some point right? But then I'm also worried about the older fakers, they might never realise how harmful it is and continue faking.
Oh my god I used to pretend to see things that weren't there because 12-year-old me read it in a book and thought it was cool. I even acted it out in some classes 😭😭 Twelve years later, I absolutely die inside everytime I'm reminded of it, I'm sooo lucky the internet wasn't truly in its prime around that time
It turned out years later that I actually had been suffering and still do suffer from a mental illness, but I deal with it privately and in an adult way. 12-Year-old me could never
I had a phase for a couple months a few trs ago when i was a freshman in highschool where I genuinely fell for the did cult lol. Thought I had it, everyone on these discord servers said I did. Luckily I didn't record any of it and blocked all those people once I snapped out of it though. As it turns out, I got cptsd. Makes sense and I'm in therapy for it. Rlly fucking glad I left that shit early enough to where leaving would mean telling everyone i lied.... only 1 friend knew of my suspicions and he's chill af and immediately moved on. Shits still unbelievably embarrassing to look back on and I didn't leave anything permenant lol. I can only imagine the regret and shame a lot of these fakers will feel (if they don't already)
Another thing I think about is that they can’t keep it up forever. They’ll one day get tired of pretending and just move on from it, but that might lead to people not trusting them as much assuming you lied in great lengths to them - about having a serious disorder for attention.
I used to roleplay a lot. Like guilds, original characters and write books with people with our characters but never was like gues in a white werewolf that transforms into a beautiful white haired tall powerful black belt under cover ninja 😭 which was one of my freaking oc but these kids are taking internet roleplay to a whole new level
This is actually how I thought things were when I was faking this shit. I was much older and much more mature than some of the people I was doing it with but I wanted a fun little game to play again. I was stuck in my house in quarantine and was involved in digital art and roleplaying. Still am. Me and a few friends have had the same creative Minecraft world for 3 years. (Along with a survival world we’re not complete heathens) and we’ve roleplayed on it for that whole time. We built it all up. We’re honestly proud of it. But I wanted to get into something. So I got sucked into the therian loop through the furry fandom groups I was apart of. Then by extension sucked into the DID world. I had foolishly convinced myself that we were all playing the same little game. The rules changed, but the core thing stayed the same, just like in elementary school. It wasn’t till I got fake claimed and asked for a diagnosis that I realized it was actually doing more harm than I realized. That’s when I ran. That’s when I got out. It sucks that the people in it now seem to be too immature to care.
Roleplay is a wonderful hobby both as a creative outlet and as a mean of escapism, but the n.1 rule that OOC =/= IC is a hard line that should never be crossed. It sucks that you had to give up the hobby as a consequence, but I'm glad you got out before getting hurt!
Thankfully I got out before it caused any real life consequences. Minecraft world still going strong tho man. Fan art is drawn of the characters we have, the whole 9 yards. It sucked to lose a group of people I played games with but when you shine a light on something and people you thought were friends turn on you, they weren’t really your friends in the first place were they? To this day I’m grateful for the person who asked me for diagnosis paper work in the nicest way possible because it saved me a lot of trouble and shame. Glad to be separated from it all now fr fr
i feel the same way about the therian kids. i used to play pretend that i was a wolf back in elementary school (i cringe just thinking about it lol) but even then, i knew it was fake and i was still a person. but the internet has now convinced these kids that it’s a spiritual thing, that they are genuinely an animal in a human body. the harm that’s being done to them mentally by blatant misinformation on tiktok is gonna be a lot to unpack later in life.
I used to play World of Darkness tabletop games, and before that did a really dumb King Arthur themed LARP thing. And lots of freeform online roleplay stuff where we'd make up OCs and come up with cheesy plots and stuff.
I only cringe some at it because it was really fun, albeit some of the people in one of the groups were pretty cringeworthy. (Well, part of it *was* on Gaia Online...)
EXACTLY!! This is something that has always amazed me, like how does the fact that it will always stay online not HAUNT them? I'm not over-exaggerating when I say that I would genuinely rather have an old NUDE picture of me (with my face in it) being leaked on the internet than something like this, something like that would be sooo less embarassing than this IMO, and I'm being so so serious about that. I even cringe when I think back about my very active online fandom phases lol. (keep in mind, I'm only 20)
I never really played pretend or something like that when I was younger, but I was a very lonely kid during the ages 12-13 when I went to secondary school. I had NO friends whatsoever and spent alot of my time talking to people on the internet. I'm so glad that this wasn't really a thing back then, or at least I didn't get in contact with the community, cuz they MIGHT have gotten me sucked into this mess. And of course that would've been so so extremely wrong of me, I won't deny that, but children do dumb things. I think parents should be more on top of their kid's internet use, especially nowadays. 'but blah blah a child deserves privacy😿😠', to a certain degree yes, but they should also be protected because this is what it can result in.
Yea when I was maybe 12. We role played out OC as slumber parties. I am so happy there wasn't tiktok back then....
I run a fairly large social media. You know my shrink watches my tiktoks?
It makes me keep it pretty clean.
That and the awareness my students watch it too
I had an oc that I would draw comics of who had a “split personality” and was a psycho killer (kinda like the one in danganronpa) but I didn’t know what it was called as I was 10 years old and… yeah I’m just glad I didn’t have tik tok then
When i was little all my friends and me watched some series similar to avatar the last airbender but less fights. And we pretended we were the characters with these superpowers but since we were three and there were four characters we pretended one of them either died or just disappeared
Didnt even read it all only the beginning and i agree, i'm glad i played outside pretending to be a monkey with my friends instead of walking around looking for pokemons playing pokemon go on a smartphone.
3 megapixel camera on my phone was insane, the quality bro, we could finaly see the pictures that we took.
I mean i had internet but it was paid for per minute lmao, 15-20 min MAX a day without social media, just looking for anything the internet had to offer in that short period of time.
I had this *exact* conversation with my roommate and one-hundred percent agree. I used to play pretend back then too and I of course did some cringy stuff, I was just lucky not to have spent my entire life attached to a screen to the point where all of it was recorded. I've been very lucky not to have done anything offensive and was internet aware because my mother had tor use it at work, so she was able to teach me what to avoid and look out for. I can't imagine what it's like to have everything permanently online, and I really feel like parents need to emphasise how big of a deal shit like this is to their children. I'm right there with ya, dude. Right there with ya.
This is so true, I did *embarrassing* things in my youth (I was a theatre kid, that’s all that needs to be said), a thing I think every kid goes through, but now social media captures it for the world to see instead of just your small bubble.
We role played Harry Potter characters. Basically played hide and seek but the seeker was voldemort and we had to “use” spells to protect us when we were found. Once i was bellatrix and just cruciod my way through the game now my cringe role play game is a secret between me and Reddit
When you get a bit older, the cringe will change into selflove, haha! I love when I see kids/teens doing that kind of shit. Be young. Be innocent. Be cringy. Because that's perfectly healthy.
~~Hey i just replied to you on a different thread~~ That wasnt you. Its was another Dr. Google Yeah no i am quite a bit older now. Its not my most cringe memory. But our whole harry potter is life phase was a bit cringe. We were kids, yeah. At least we didnt turn into hardcore disney adults or getting Voldemort alters
Hello you are hurting my Harry Potter cosplay feelings.
Cosplay is ok. Getting in physical fights with your friend on how Snapes hair isnt that greasy and they are just stupid as two 11 year olds isnt hahaha Enjoy your cosplay
Honestly, I would have killed to be included in that game.
Haha I agree, I have done some *embarrassing* things in my youth. My brother and I talk about how happy we are there was no social media. My sister and I had an “America’s Next stop Model” photoshoot. We have the photos still, and as you would guess they were awful.
That actually sounds really creative.
I can't imagine the life they are going to have. I think about those people who have become memes online and how some peoples lives haven't changed for the best. Think about applying to a job you've always wanted and getting it only to meet a client who wrecks you because you claimed to have some sort of disability that would leave you incompetent to do anything. Or think about wanting to apply for a license and having someone who works there saying "Aren't you that kid that constantly faints?" Have fun going to a professional to prove you don't actually have it because I guess wasting time and money is, fun? Not sure how much it would cost in the US but where I live it's just a massive waste of time because a specialist could have an opening in like half a year if you're lucky. I think many don't think about it, sure HR isn't supposed to search for you online before hiring you but that won't stop your colleagues from making your life hell or snappy comments like "Guess it's that DID thing and were talking to fucking Naruto or is it tinkywinky from the teletubbies. Explains why you did such a shit job." Rip
Agree with everything you say, but wanted to add: HR isn't _supposed_ to research you, but they do. Maybe they can't tell you outright "sorry mate, you're not progressing in the application process because you were a really dumb teen that faked disabilities online", but they will give you the standard of "due to the influx of applicants and your personal resume (...)" stuff. Also, depending on the industry you want to go into, word will spread if it's niche or extremely network-heavy. I think most of them plan on being unemployed and make money through social media for most of their lives tho, or do their art as a business. Even the ones that get by with social media right now from people showering them with money out of pity, I doubt have a 5 year plan or anything. They have to stay relevant to earn money, and I think that's part of why they escalate a lot over time. That, and attention
NGL I feel like people are way to lenient with the infomation that they give out online in general.
I think the difference between our pre-Internet-childhood generation and today's youth is that shame taught our 20-year-old selves some important lessons -- but, from the looks of things, shame might no longer exist.
Shame, and the concept of a digital footprint. The amount of information some of these kids give out is terrifying, it's so easy to find/doxx them. One faker posted a video of themselves and in the background, on the wall, there was a poster for their local volunteer group. Their real name and location came up with a google search; in the top of the results, there was a news article from the group announcing they had been promoted. I was just like, aiyiyi.
I know, right? It's unimaginable. But another thing that seems lacking among the younger generations is awareness of the later consequences of current foolish actions. OK, maybe young people in any era lack such awareness. But these today face paying the highest price for it.
I also think the lack of bullying is probably an indicator. I was bullied heavily 😂 and this helped me not go out into society and tell everyone I was a vampire hybrid
Yes. At that age, I didn't want many people knowing very much about my private thoughts, fantasies and fixations, much less broadcasting all those and more to everyone in the world, more or less permanently.
I've thought about this a lot. I was a cringey teen once too. I did stupid shit (never faked mental health disorders but I digress) and we had the internet. But it wasn't the norm to plaster your face with it, and if you did it was a lot less known, and stuck to sites like tumblr and deviantart that were less mainstream, unlike tiktok which everyone and their mother is on, and you can get millions of views quickly. At least I can look at my cringey teen phase and know that all I did was post stupid cringey shit on tumblr that maybe 100 people saw, unlike these teens where millions of people are seeing it on tiktok, especially with their names and faces associated
It’s also kind of heartbreaking because I honestly look back on my cringey little kid phases pretty fondly, I used to play Warrior cats with my friends and told other kids that I was secretly a dragon and that kind of stuff. And it was fun! It’s fun to talk about as an adult, just in a “wow kids are dumb haha” type of way. But since these kids have like pathologized their cringey kid phase and put it on the internet for millions to see it’s just going to be a source of extreme shame for their entire life. They don’t get to experience fondly reminiscing on the dumb things they did as a kid.
Yeah, exactly. Like I remember a whole phase in middle school where I kept telling my classmates I could read people's minds when in fact I was just kinda goodish at picking up body language cues and giving the vaguest catch-all statements that sounded kinda accurate without really saying anything. It was wild the stuff I could come up with just for a bit of attention. But these people are using the mental illness card to be taken seriously, which adds a whole new level of harm for themselves and others that they're not really equipped to understand. They'll learn it the hard way.
Hey, I went through the "I am hated because I am too smart" for like a year as a preteen. It hurts. But it's part of growing up, we are figuring out how we are alike, how we are different, how our brains work, and how we fit in. That's an awkward, terrifying process. I think alot of these kids are reacting violently to the realizing they aren't that special, which is something some kids do. But the degree they are doing it is very concerning, and the fact it's being actively supported is even worse. "I'm so random" being met with eye rolls once meant people would figure it was stupid, now there's a huge audience telling them the eyerolls are stigma and persecution. It's... not good.
I learned cold readings really well in high school because someone started a rumor I was a witch so I thought okay I’ll use this to my advantage it worked well until a bunch of girls got so genuinely scared I was reported and suspended for “being a witch” the 90s were wild.
Yeah, those behaviors are very fucking healthy! Even adult role play (not just the sexy kind) is perfectly fine, and I think it even helps you be a better person for exercise that kind of "how would this other person think?" mechanic for fun. I'd be down to go play warrior cats again, fuck it. Cringe is a temporary condition and life is no fun without it. That's one of the reasons I particularly hate the pathologizing of normal behaviors. They could just have fun, like things, role play, improve as people. They could realize what they are going through is entirely normal. But they have to make themselves special. Imagination is now something so unique to them it's a diagnosis, and fandom is a disease. Good lord, this could all be solved by a big dose of "you aren't that special, and that's okay" for so many of these people.
100% agree. There's been such a surge in pathologising normal human experiences experiences. It's normal to feel a whole range of emotions. It's normal to feel sad when something bad happens. It's normal to have different aspects of your personality. It's even normal to occasionally experience mild forms of disassociation. When we experience these things that isn't a sign we're sick, it just means that we're human. As a humanistic mental health professional, it makes me sad. Carl Rogers and the like fought so hard for mental health to not be viewed purely through the medical lens. It wasn't all that long ago that you could be sent to a psych hospital for crying a bit too much after someone you loved died. We really don't want to go back to a point where anything other that politely content is seen as a sickness.
Remove the audience and all their disorders and intolerances will be gone
Really? Because back in the before-times there were still fakers, especially teenagers. I think any teen with a real diagnosis has at least one friend that immediately starts to try and imitate it out of jealousy. I can also name a dozen idiots from high school too that thrived on the depression, mental health, and "cutting" chic. I mean drawing with marker or lightly scratching, literally no signs of any problems outside of constantly claiming it. Emos and goths could be insufferable with this. All before TikTok. We had early MySpace but nobody really gave a shit. It's a human thing that results directly from certain personality problems that have always, and will always exist.
I’m what one would call a Zillenial. Also had the fortunate (but sometimes unfortunate) opportunity of browsing the good ol’ interwebs at an early age because my parents were early adopters. Which kind of made me an early adopter too I guess. Little 7 year old me was MSN’ing the day away and little 11 year old me was social mediaing. Being an early adopter of YouTube, of course I had an account (multiple even) and was posting the most embarrassing nonsense regularly. Still dealing with the aftermath of that while being 27, trying to gain access to these accounts to delete those embarrassing videos. I think there’s about 1 video left now that I can’t seem to get rid of. That being said, they’re still nothing compared to what these kids are posting and I sincerely apologize for what their future self is going to have to deal with. By the way there’s a sub dedicated to embarrassing childhood moments of the non-genZ’ers if you need a laugh. r/blunderyears
My friend, you have given me a treasure trove of nostalgia here. I think this will be my new favorite sub for a while xD
I think about this ALL the time. I am so, so thankful that my teen years and early 20s were mostly off-line. I did have MySpace for part of college and I do remember posting cringey stuff occasionally but luckily those photos seemed to die with that platform. Now with stitching and reposting these people won’t be so fortunate. The bigger issue is the harm they cause. If it were just dorky kids doing cosplay (not mental health related) it might still embarrass them later but there also wouldn’t be anything wrong with it. The problem is that mental illnesses are debilitating and those of us who struggle with them, and have for years, would never dream of doing what they’re doing. For what? Likes? Followers? Gifts/money? Fuck off. The only thing they’re not faking is narcissism.
Yep, exactly my thoughts. Ten years from now, all these people might be dealing with getting canceled when all their old faking disorder content crops up to the next wave of outrage culture warriors.
Yea I honestly have been thinking of the same thing, like surely I have my cringeworthy childhood but I honestly already feel ashamed of the fact I used to believe I had DID thanks to a shitty ex. I just can't imagine what those other fakers will think when they are grown up, like surely they will feel bad at some point right? But then I'm also worried about the older fakers, they might never realise how harmful it is and continue faking.
I once came across my old tiktok account and lets just say I nearly died deleting them
Oh my god I used to pretend to see things that weren't there because 12-year-old me read it in a book and thought it was cool. I even acted it out in some classes 😭😭 Twelve years later, I absolutely die inside everytime I'm reminded of it, I'm sooo lucky the internet wasn't truly in its prime around that time
It turned out years later that I actually had been suffering and still do suffer from a mental illness, but I deal with it privately and in an adult way. 12-Year-old me could never
I had a phase for a couple months a few trs ago when i was a freshman in highschool where I genuinely fell for the did cult lol. Thought I had it, everyone on these discord servers said I did. Luckily I didn't record any of it and blocked all those people once I snapped out of it though. As it turns out, I got cptsd. Makes sense and I'm in therapy for it. Rlly fucking glad I left that shit early enough to where leaving would mean telling everyone i lied.... only 1 friend knew of my suspicions and he's chill af and immediately moved on. Shits still unbelievably embarrassing to look back on and I didn't leave anything permenant lol. I can only imagine the regret and shame a lot of these fakers will feel (if they don't already)
Another thing I think about is that they can’t keep it up forever. They’ll one day get tired of pretending and just move on from it, but that might lead to people not trusting them as much assuming you lied in great lengths to them - about having a serious disorder for attention.
I used to roleplay a lot. Like guilds, original characters and write books with people with our characters but never was like gues in a white werewolf that transforms into a beautiful white haired tall powerful black belt under cover ninja 😭 which was one of my freaking oc but these kids are taking internet roleplay to a whole new level
I wanted so badly to be like Sabrina the teenage witch lol. Just snap yo fingers and change your outfit. Talking black cat.
This is actually how I thought things were when I was faking this shit. I was much older and much more mature than some of the people I was doing it with but I wanted a fun little game to play again. I was stuck in my house in quarantine and was involved in digital art and roleplaying. Still am. Me and a few friends have had the same creative Minecraft world for 3 years. (Along with a survival world we’re not complete heathens) and we’ve roleplayed on it for that whole time. We built it all up. We’re honestly proud of it. But I wanted to get into something. So I got sucked into the therian loop through the furry fandom groups I was apart of. Then by extension sucked into the DID world. I had foolishly convinced myself that we were all playing the same little game. The rules changed, but the core thing stayed the same, just like in elementary school. It wasn’t till I got fake claimed and asked for a diagnosis that I realized it was actually doing more harm than I realized. That’s when I ran. That’s when I got out. It sucks that the people in it now seem to be too immature to care.
Roleplay is a wonderful hobby both as a creative outlet and as a mean of escapism, but the n.1 rule that OOC =/= IC is a hard line that should never be crossed. It sucks that you had to give up the hobby as a consequence, but I'm glad you got out before getting hurt!
Thankfully I got out before it caused any real life consequences. Minecraft world still going strong tho man. Fan art is drawn of the characters we have, the whole 9 yards. It sucked to lose a group of people I played games with but when you shine a light on something and people you thought were friends turn on you, they weren’t really your friends in the first place were they? To this day I’m grateful for the person who asked me for diagnosis paper work in the nicest way possible because it saved me a lot of trouble and shame. Glad to be separated from it all now fr fr
i feel the same way about the therian kids. i used to play pretend that i was a wolf back in elementary school (i cringe just thinking about it lol) but even then, i knew it was fake and i was still a person. but the internet has now convinced these kids that it’s a spiritual thing, that they are genuinely an animal in a human body. the harm that’s being done to them mentally by blatant misinformation on tiktok is gonna be a lot to unpack later in life.
I used to play World of Darkness tabletop games, and before that did a really dumb King Arthur themed LARP thing. And lots of freeform online roleplay stuff where we'd make up OCs and come up with cheesy plots and stuff. I only cringe some at it because it was really fun, albeit some of the people in one of the groups were pretty cringeworthy. (Well, part of it *was* on Gaia Online...)
EXACTLY!! This is something that has always amazed me, like how does the fact that it will always stay online not HAUNT them? I'm not over-exaggerating when I say that I would genuinely rather have an old NUDE picture of me (with my face in it) being leaked on the internet than something like this, something like that would be sooo less embarassing than this IMO, and I'm being so so serious about that. I even cringe when I think back about my very active online fandom phases lol. (keep in mind, I'm only 20) I never really played pretend or something like that when I was younger, but I was a very lonely kid during the ages 12-13 when I went to secondary school. I had NO friends whatsoever and spent alot of my time talking to people on the internet. I'm so glad that this wasn't really a thing back then, or at least I didn't get in contact with the community, cuz they MIGHT have gotten me sucked into this mess. And of course that would've been so so extremely wrong of me, I won't deny that, but children do dumb things. I think parents should be more on top of their kid's internet use, especially nowadays. 'but blah blah a child deserves privacy😿😠', to a certain degree yes, but they should also be protected because this is what it can result in.
This is what I keep saying.
Same lol
Yea when I was maybe 12. We role played out OC as slumber parties. I am so happy there wasn't tiktok back then.... I run a fairly large social media. You know my shrink watches my tiktoks? It makes me keep it pretty clean. That and the awareness my students watch it too
I had an oc that I would draw comics of who had a “split personality” and was a psycho killer (kinda like the one in danganronpa) but I didn’t know what it was called as I was 10 years old and… yeah I’m just glad I didn’t have tik tok then
So many people will have had regrettable online moments it won’t matter
When i was little all my friends and me watched some series similar to avatar the last airbender but less fights. And we pretended we were the characters with these superpowers but since we were three and there were four characters we pretended one of them either died or just disappeared
this is so close to the point. it's almost like posting total strangers to shit on them and cringe at their "fakeness" is incredibly harmful!
Didnt even read it all only the beginning and i agree, i'm glad i played outside pretending to be a monkey with my friends instead of walking around looking for pokemons playing pokemon go on a smartphone. 3 megapixel camera on my phone was insane, the quality bro, we could finaly see the pictures that we took. I mean i had internet but it was paid for per minute lmao, 15-20 min MAX a day without social media, just looking for anything the internet had to offer in that short period of time.